


Sleeping and Waking

by TempleCloud



Series: Journey to Camelot [6]
Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Henry IV - Shakespeare, Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux
Genre: Death Threats, Developing Friendships, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-09-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:28:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26548264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TempleCloud/pseuds/TempleCloud
Summary: Sir John is overjoyed to have a new friend he can laugh with and exchange insults with, the way he once did with Hal.  But is being friends with a homicidal maniac like Erik even MORE dangerous than being friends with Prince Hal was?  And do he and Erik really have much in common, other than missing the people whom they loved and who rejected them?
Relationships: Christine Daaé/Erik | Phantom of the Opera, Sir John Falstaff & Erik, Sir John Falstaff & Prince Hal
Series: Journey to Camelot [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1871695
Kudos: 14





	1. Chapter 1

‘Is King Arthur asleep yet?’ whispered Erik.

‘I think so,’ I whispered back. ‘But keep your voice low anyway.’

‘What’s he like?’

I thought about it. ‘Not bad, as kings go. You know how some of them are like gobstoppers, changing colour as each layer is stripped away until there’s nothing left, but he’s like a stick of rock with “Arthur” written all the way through.’ I had wondered at first why Arthur was so different from any king I’d ever met, and now I thought I knew. ‘You see, he grew up not knowing that he was the heir, and nobody else knew except Merlyn, so he never had to stage a dramatic transformation from being A Wild Prince to being A Good King. Of course, he’d had his own sort of wildness, with being turned into animals and having adventures with outlaws and witches, but apart from that, most of his friends when he was young would have been honest people, like the kennel-boy and the austringer in his foster-father’s castle, and the farm workers in the village. And there was no-one to tell him he shouldn’t associate with commoners. So when he came to power, there was no-one he had to kick out of his way: no-one he was ashamed of knowing. And now that he’s established and everyone knows what sort of king he is, he doesn’t need to be ashamed of being friends with _anyone_ , good or bad.’

‘So, not the sort of king who has his palace laid out with an intricate system of traps, torture-chambers, and dungeons, and then tries to kill the inventor to stop him revealing the secrets?’ Erik kept his voice carefully neutral, not letting on whether he thought this was a good thing or not.

‘I don’t think Arthur’s into torturing anyone,’ I said. ‘He banned trial by ordeal years ago, and he’s trying to have trial by combat phased out now, and replaced with trial by evidence.’

‘So he might have a use for spying devices?’ asked Erik eagerly. ‘Does he know about Lancelot and Guinevere?’

‘He doesn’t really want to know,’ I said, and then realised with a sinking heart that I could have put Arthur’s peace of mind at risk. ‘I might have let something slip the first time we met, but I was drunk and feverish and I’m completely untrustworthy anyway, so he didn’t pay any attention.’

‘So if he doesn’t want spies or torturers or assassins, what _does_ he want me for?’ wailed Erik, in real despair and fear. ‘Why does he want any of us?’

‘Just company, I think. Anyway, we’ll find out when we get back to Camelot. It’ll be good to have a proper bedroom, won’t it? With a picture of _The Return of the Prodigal Son_ on the wall.’

‘And a coffin lined in red satin to sleep in,’ said Erik longingly.

I hadn’t expected this. ‘You sleep in a coffin? What are you: a vampire?’

‘Certainly not,’ said Erik. ‘I’m a normal man who just happens to sleep _in_ a coffin _on_ an island _in_ a lake _under_ the Opera House _in_ Paris, for this is the house that Erik built! And now Cheiron’s done a bit of cutting and stitching on my face, I’m even starting to look like a normal man!’

‘What?’ I burst out laughing. ‘You look as though you’ve been knotted together out of three bits of mildewed string, with a pair of yellow marbles tied in for eyes. Is not your skin as yellow as a primrose, your hair worn away to three greasy wisps combed across your skull and two more to serve for a beard, and do you yet call yourself normal-looking? Are not your fingers as tendrillous as bindweed, your smile the grimace of a skull, and your laughter the shriek of a demon, and you expect to pass for _normal?_ ’

‘Well, at least I’m not lying there like a beached whale, taking up all the room,’ retorted Erik.

‘And how much room do you need, when you’re as withered as a strip of dried kelp?’

‘You Strasburg goose!’

‘You silverfish fossilised in the cliffs of Anglesey!’

It had been a while since I’d played Insults, as Arthur was always so courteous that it was hard not to be courteous in return. Back in Eastcheap, Hal and I had considered ourselves experts at the game. Robin, my page, had become quite good at it once he got over the idea that, as I was his boss, he was supposed to be respectful to me. Bardolph was hopeless, not because he was respectful, but because words weren’t his strong point; and besides, as he was uglier than anyone I’d met (before I encountered Erik), nothing he could say about anyone else’s appearance could match what we could say about him. Nym was a man of few words (to be precise, he knew one word, but wasn’t sure what it meant), and Pistol couldn’t talk except in quotations from other plays, usually Marlowe.

‘You Obelix, you Michelin man, you barrage-balloon!’ returned Erik, not playing badly for a beginner.

‘You Lazarus coming from the tomb with the grave-cloths still on...’ but at that point I was overtaken by a fit of coughing. 

Under Eastcheap rules, Erik should have waited until I’d got my breath back, but instead he put in a string of terms I didn’t quite catch, concluding with, ‘You wineskin with the eyes of a dog and the heart of a hind!’

‘That one wins!’ I gasped, laughing. ‘That’s poetry!’

‘It is, isn’t it?’ said Erik. ‘The _Iliad_ Book One, to be precise: Achilles describing Agamemnon.’

‘Let’s go to sleep now,’ I said. ‘By tomorrow, I’ll have some better descriptions of you.’

‘So will I for you. Well, goodnight, Whale.’

‘Goodnight, Kelp.’

When I woke, Erik was already up, and there was a letter scrawled in red ink lying next to me. It read:

_Dear Whale,_

_As a musician, my ears are the most important part of my body. Consequently, I object to being kept awake all night by someone who snores like a pneumatic drill. If you presume to snore again tonight, I will cut your throat._

_Yours sincerely,_

_The Phantom_

The letter was too glorious to keep to myself. Arthur and Cheiron were busy praying, so I went and showed it to Andrew and Malvolio first.

‘His handwriting’s _terrible_!’ said Andrew. ‘It’s not even joined-up! Do you think it’s written in real blood?’

I held the letter up to the sunlight. ‘No, dried blood would be darker. Anyway, I shouldn’t think Erik has enough blood in his body to spare any for ink, and if he’d bitten me to use mine, I’m sure I’d have felt it.’ I fingered my neck for puncture wounds just in case, but didn’t find any.

‘We’ve got to report this to the King,’ announced Malvolio. ‘I don’t like you, but I won’t let you be subjected to death threats.’

‘Come on, it’s only a joke!’ I said. ‘There was a pub I used to drink in where hardly an evening went by without people pulling out daggers, posturing, maybe scuffling a bit. It always looked as though people were on the point of murdering each other, but it never actually happened.’

‘Never?’ asked Andrew.

‘Well – hardly ever,’ I admitted. ‘But Erik’s more of an introvert, so what he’s done is a sort of cautious equivalent.’

‘Yes; it’s called “taunting with the licence of ink,” agreed Andrew.

‘Well, I still think we should tell the King and Cheiron,’ repeated Malvolio.

‘Tell me what?’ asked Cheiron, trotting over to join us. We showed him the note. He frowned at it. ‘Dear Whale?’

‘We were playing Insults last night,’ I explained.

‘Yes, I heard you,’ said Cheiron, frowning. ‘You do realise Erik is a bit sensitive about the way he looks, don’t you? Having spent his childhood being exhibited as a sideshow freak, I mean?’

‘We were only messing around!’ I protested. ‘Where I come from, it’s a sign of affection.’

‘I know that, and I’m sure Erik knew it last night. But by this morning, he might have decided that he’s mortally offended. He’s a bit volatile like that.’

‘Are you accusing Erik of having no sense of humour?’ I asked.

‘No, I’m saying he has a very twisted sense of humour,’ said Cheiron. ‘His idea of a hilarious practical joke involves locking people in a hall of mirrors and then turning up the heating until they go delirious with heatstroke and dehydration, and hang themselves.’

‘Oh, I’ve been through much worse than that,’ I said.

‘So have I,’ said Malvolio. ‘And I still don’t think it was funny.’

‘No, but everyone else did,’ pointed out Andrew.

‘Bullying doesn’t become all right just because you call it a joke,’ said Cheiron. ‘And after all, Jack, even in your world the insults didn’t always stay affectionate, did they?’

‘Not always.’ That was the point of the game: the risk that your friend who was haranguing you in jest today might have decided by tomorrow that he really did despise you and couldn’t understand why he’d ever wanted to spend time with you. It was gambling with friendship at the stake.

‘Well, then: save vituperation for those you can trust. I know you like Erik, and it’s perfectly all right to let him address you as Jack rather than Sir John, but letting him describe you as a beached whale and a dog-eyed wineskin when you’ve known him less than twenty-four hours might be a bit premature. In the meantime, I’ll have a word with him myself.’ And Cheiron trotted off to where Erik was sitting in the shadow of a rock. We could hear Cheiron calling as he went: ‘Erik, what did we agree about not killing people _or_ threatening to kill people _or_ driving people to kill themselves?’

The telling-off continued out of earshot for a few minutes, and then Cheiron came back. ‘I think Erik’s ready to apologise now,’ he said. ‘You might like to talk to him in private, but I’ll stand a short way off, just in case he starts any more trouble.’

Erik was still sitting against the rock, writing something in an exercise book, and crooning, ‘[ _Thy rebuke hath broken his heart; he is full of heaviness, he is full of heaviness._](https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=youtube+%27thy+rebuke+hath+broken+his+heart%27+handel&docid=608039349312358281&mid=DC8F58FC5BEC8E91BE14DC8F58FC5BEC8E91BE14&view=detail&FORM=VIRE)’ I don’t know whether he was singing about Jesus, or about me, or about himself, but probably he was just singing it because he liked melancholy songs.

‘What are you writing now?’ I asked. ‘More death threats?’

‘No, I’m practising my non-psychopathic handwriting, to help me calm down,’ said Erik, holding out the notebook to show me. He had copied out, from a book that Cheiron had lent him, a poem beginning ‘When in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes’. Erik’s ‘non-psychopathic’ handwriting was only slightly neater than his ‘homicidal maniac’ style, and still not joined up, but it was in plain black ink, and the shape of the letters was probably intended to be italic. ‘You mustn’t think I’m illiterate,’ added Erik, ‘only I’ve spent so much of my life travelling that I’m more used to writing either Nastaliq or Devanagari. I can write musical notation of course – so if they ever find my score for _Don Juan Triumphant_ , they’ll know what it should sound like, but not what they’re singing. Do you know what, though? I’ve just noticed something about this poem I never realised before. Can you see it, too?’

I shrugged. ‘Well, the version I knew was “When in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes,/ The trick is to come out with brazen lies.”’ (Not that this actually helped, of course, if the person who used to love you because your lies were such fantastically tall stories, untarnished by any hint of plausibility or consistency, that they were much funnier than reality could ever be, had now decided to associate only with honest people.)

‘Look at the last two lines! “And thy sweet love _remembered_ such wealth brings/ That then I scorn to change my state with kings.” I used to think the poet was saying that he _is_ loved and that that makes up for everything else, but maybe he’s saying he _remembers_ when he was loved, and that’s enough. And I think Christine used to love me a little bit, at least when I was just the mysterious voice that taught her to sing, before she knew me as the creepy masked man who kidnapped her and held her hostage for a fortnight. I know she loved her boyfriend more – after all, they’d been best friends ever since they were children – but if I can remember that once she loved me even a little, that’s better than nothing.

‘You know what, though? Even after I let her go, she felt sorry for me because I was so ugly and lonely, and she used to come back and visit me sometimes. Well, until I kidnapped her again and threatened to set off a bomb and kill the two of us and her boyfriend, and everyone else in the building, unless she agreed to marry me – that did rather wreck our relationship. So after that, Christine and her boyfriend went away somewhere to get married, and I lay down in my coffin to die of a broken heart, like you, like all of us when the golden ones we’ve mentored no longer need us. Perhaps we’re not so different after all.’

‘We were opposites,’ I said. ‘I was like a planet, round, well-watered and full of life, as long as I could warm myself in the love of a bright star and have lesser moons to orbit me. You were like a meteorite hurtling friendlessly through cold space until you found something to smash into. But we’ve both finished up in the heart of Arthur’s love, and that’s something real, not just something to remember or long for. He doesn’t need to love people _because_ they’re funny or musical, or hate them because they’re old or ugly. He’s just got so much love pouring out of him that it cascades onto everyone else. So don’t worry, Erik, lad. We’ll be all right. Anyway, let’s go and see if breakfast’s ready yet.’


	2. Chapter 2

One advantage to having Erik with us was that the meals became much more interesting. Unfortunately, the portions were much smaller, because Erik complained that it was tedious enough being expected to eat three meals a day without being put off his food by the sight of other people making pigs of themselves. After he’d managed to force down a portion of Cheiron’s excellent herb and mushroom omelette, he retreated to the cave to catch up on the sleep he’d missed last night, as Cheiron had agreed that the sun was getting a bit hot and it might be best not to start on the journey until late afternoon.

‘You never spoiled me this much when I was new here,’ I pointed out to Cheiron, when I was fairly sure Erik was asleep. ‘Then it was a case of: “It’s porridge for breakfast – take it or leave it.”’

‘Yes, but there wasn’t any danger of you forgetting to eat, was there?’ said Cheiron. ‘Have you heard of a philosopher called Epicurus?’

‘Wasn’t he the one who said that the right way to live is to enjoy the maximum amount of pleasure?’ 

‘That’s right: the maximum pleasure with the minimum suffering. And he said that in order to do that, you need to learn to distinguish between three types of desire. There are desires that are both natural and necessary: for example, the desire to eat enough bread not to be hungry, drink enough water not to be thirsty, and have enough shelter not to be cold. Those have to be fulfilled. Then there are desires that are natural but not strictly necessary for survival, like the desire for rich food and wine and sex. In the case of those, you need to think about whether indulging them will bring more pleasure than pain; so, if eating and drinking too much makes you ill, or having sex with lots of people means you’re more likely to catch an infection, it might bring more suffering than pleasure, in which case it isn’t really worth it. And thirdly, there are desires that aren’t natural or necessary, like the desire for expensive clothes or fame or political power, and the key to those is to realise that they’re worthless, and not seek them at all.’

‘Epicurus needed to get out more,’ I said. ‘And which category did he think friendship came into? A mere scutcheon?’

‘Oh, very high up the list of essentials. What he actually said was, “Eating a meal without a friend to share it is dining like a wolf or a lion,” but that’s extremely unfair on wolves; they’re very sociable animals. But the point is that his theory about knowing the difference between needs and desires only works if you’re conscious of _having_ needs and desires. Now, if _you’re_ too hot, or tired, or hungry, you notice it, and you make sure everyone else knows as well. But Erik seems to forget that he’s a mind attached to a body that needs to eat and drink, and so, for the moment, we need to tempt him to eat meals, until it becomes a habit.’

‘So what you’re really saying is that I’m a very physical person, whereas Erik is completely mental?’

‘I’m afraid so. But you’re being incredibly patient with him anyway.’

‘Oh, he’s not much weirder than most of the people I used to drink with in Eastcheap,’ I said. ‘Well – no worse than Pistol, anyway.’

Erik woke up in a reasonably good mood, and stayed patient even while trying to teach Andrew a song called [_Deep Purple Dreams_](https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=youtube+%27deep+purple+dreams%27&docid=608038614823012550&mid=0E5FE91D2003249E0A530E5FE91D2003249E0A53&view=detail&FORM=VIRE). Late in the afternoon, we finally set off on our journey, until we found somewhere to camp. As we now had three tents, Erik and I shared one of the bell-tents, Andrew and Malvolio took the other, and Arthur had the pup-tent to himself.

‘Promise not to kill me tonight?’ I asked Erik.

‘Yes, if you promise not to snore.’

‘Come on, I can’t promise that,’ I said. ‘But we’ve both been criminals and we’re both trying to reform now, so, if you promise not to kill me, I’ll promise not to steal that gold ring off your finger.’

‘You wouldn’t!’ shrieked Erik, curling his fingers protectively round it. ‘Anyway, stealing this ring would be far worse than murder.’

‘Why? Is it a magic one? Does it make you invisible?’

‘Far more miraculous than that, my dear Whale. This is practically very nearly a wedding-ring.’

‘From that girl you kidnapped?’

‘I gave it to Christine when I first wanted her to know me as a man and not as the Angel of Music. She lost it, but I found it and offered it to her again, this time as our wedding-ring, when I was trying to force her to marry me. But when she had pity on me and took off my mask and kissed my ruin of a face, when nobody else had ever kissed me in my entire life, not even my mother when I was little – then I had mercy on her, too, and gave her the ring so that she and her boyfriend could get married while I lay down to die. Then, when I was dead, they came back and placed the ring on my finger when they buried me. And that’s why this ring is _preccioussss!_ ’

For the record, I have no idea how Erik has moved into another life still bearing the ring he was buried with. Obviously, you’re not supposed to be able to take anything with you when you die. But then, Erik and I had come here in our bodies, perhaps because they were part of who we were, or because, until we’d learnt how to take proper care of our ruined earthly bodies, we couldn’t be trusted with the glorious bodies of resurrection. It was like the way that very young children might keep a minnow or a snail before they are old enough to look after a dog or a horse. And Erik’s ‘nearly wedding-ring’ was a part of who he was, too, and a reminder that mercy and generosity did exist. I was glad he’d been allowed to keep it.

‘Did you sleep well?’ asked Erik the next morning.

I yawned. ‘Ah, yes, thanks.’

‘Did you have any dreams?’

‘Yes, it was great. I dreamed about a weaver who went into the forest to learn his lines for a play but got turned into a donkey, and there was a young politician who was half a fairy but was mortal from the waist down, and then the Queen of the Fairies fell in love with the donkey because he reminded her of her old lover, the Lord Chancellor, and it ended with the entire House of Lords getting married to fairies.’

‘Liar!’ snarled Erik. ‘You were plagued by nightmares of tropical jungles, weren’t you? You saw every beast of the forest either lurking to attack you or waiting to gorge itself on your carrion. Admit it!’

‘No, I didn’t. Was I supposed to?’

‘Oh, for pity’s sake!’ exclaimed Erik. ‘What’s the point of sending you subliminal messages if you can’t even be bothered to listen? For the past seven hours, I’ve been imitating the call of every noxious beast to trouble your sleep. I have been the roar of the lion and that of the leopard, the howl of the wolf and the yelp of the jackal and the laugh of the hyena. I have been the whine of the mosquito, the buzz of the tsetse fly and the chitter of the little South American vampire bat, all dripping with malaria and sleeping-sickness and rabies to poison your blood even as they drank from you...’

‘How do you know I don’t already have sleeping-sickness?’ I retorted.

‘I was wondering whether you’d wake up screaming or soak your sleeping-bag in terror as you snored on,’ continued Erik. ‘Instead of which, you just lay there dreaming a fairy-tale about donkeys and the House of Lords! There’s no doubt about it: my powers are declining. Once I could keep the entire staff of the Opera House – not just hysterical singers and dancers, but everyone from the managers to sturdy firemen and horse-trainers – in such a pitch of terror that if they so much as glimpsed the rat-catcher with his lantern, they’d scream that the Phantom had a head made of fire! And now I can’t even intimidate the most abject coward ever to disgrace a knighthood.’

He looked so crestfallen that I put an arm round his shoulders. ‘You were just trying too hard,’ I said. ‘After all, I’ve never been to Africa, so I don’t know what a hyena is supposed to sound like, do I? And anyway, I’m _not_ the most abject coward ever to disgrace a knighthood. There’s always Sir Andrew.’

‘He doesn’t count,’ said Erik. ‘I think he might really have some talent as a singer, though: not a lot, but some. And that’s the way the world goes. Once I was tutor to a classical soprano whose genius perfectly complemented my own; now I’m trying to teach an inane butterfly who’d quite like to be good at singing because he’s used to being not very good at anything. Once you befriended a brave prince; now you’re willing to spend your time with a psychopathic ex-sideshow freak. In the end, we all find companions who don’t have any better options.’


	3. Chapter 3

By the next evening, Erik had come up with a solution: ‘You will not snore tonight, because you will not sleep tonight! I will sing you the whole of my masterpiece, _Don Juan Triumphant_. I have spent twenty years working on it and polishing it to perfection until every note burns, and you shall be the first audience of all five hours of it!’

‘Fair enough,’ I said. ‘Is it funny?’

‘Certainly not! It is the expression of the agony in the soul of the composer, refracted through the lens of music to express suffering in every aspect.’

‘Then why are people going to want to go and see a five-hour opera about Don Juan that isn’t even funny?’

‘They aren’t supposed to _want_ to see it! They’re supposed to _have_ to go and see it!’

‘Why?’

‘Up until the twentieth century, there was a curious prejudice that “music” should mean a sound that people enjoyed listening to,’ observed Erik. ‘Gradually, classical musicians, along with artists in other media, taught the educated concert-goer to expect, instead, music that would challenge perceptions of “enjoyment” and of the distinction between “music” and “tuneless cacophony”. 

‘But the trouble was that while this was happening in the classical realm, popular music until the 1980s consisted of tunes that people could dance to. This problem was dealt with by the invention of “dance music” consisting of nothing except a heavy bass beat that feels like being repeatedly punched in the stomach. This way, your successors, instead of drinking sweet wine and singing bawdy ballads, could spend their evenings jerking about in time to the aural equivalent of being hit over the head – which was why it was called “clubbing” – while being blinded by flashing strobe lights, and taking pills to make themselves imagine they were having more fun than any generation before them.

‘And yet, while both classical music and dance music required more and more training to enjoy them, opera was being supplanted by something called “musicals” that sent people home humming their tunes. The only way to deal with those is for critics to train audiences to regard every musical as escapist froth – whether it’s about urban prostitution, gang warfare in New York, or the problems faced by Jews in Tsarist Russia. They must learn to call every attractive tune “saccharine”, and every story that makes you care about the characters “sentimental”, until everyone has learnt to despise such things. And when the sweetness is finally sucked out of all music, then the revenge of the musician will be complete!’

‘Why do you need revenge?’ I asked. ‘Can you eat revenge? Or drink it? Does it improve your looks? Or take away the pain of not being loved?’

‘I don’t want those any more!’ retorted Erik. ‘Our imperfections were the only thing that made us distinctive, and now we’re losing them. Don’t you see: if you’re not quite as fat as you were, and I’m not quite as ugly or as evil as I was, and Malvolio isn’t quite as obnoxious as he was, or Sir Andrew quite as stupid, then we’ll no longer be the people we were written to be!’

‘Maybe not,’ I yawned, ‘but we’ll probably be so happy that we don’t mind.’

‘Who wants to be _happy_?’ sneered Erik. ‘I’m a genius; geniuses are supposed to be deranged and isolated and misunderstood.’ And with that he rolled over and went to sleep.

Erik’s moods were so sudden that I wasn’t sure I’d ever learn to read them. But then, perhaps I wasn’t as shrewd at knowing what went on in other people’s minds as I thought. I certainly hadn’t understood the way Hal’s mind worked, and we’d been best friends for about ten years before the day when, suddenly, we weren’t. 

I know the plays make it look as though everything turned round within a few months, but that’s playwrights for you. But, thinking back, perhaps things had begun to change years earlier, when Hal had come back from a meeting with his father to get us organised for the Battle of Shrewsbury. He’d been still the same Hal, still affectionate and joking and mischievous, but with a new air of authority, rattling off orders for battle before we’d even had breakfast: ‘Bardolph, take this letter to my brother the Duke of Lancaster and this one to Lord Westmoreland; come on, Peto, we’ve got thirty miles to ride this morning; Jack, you’re in charge of recruiting 150 foot-soldiers – meet me in the Temple Court 2pm tomorrow and I’ll pay you the money to equip them,’ and then riding off again, as brisk as a dolphin herding fish.

In France, the Crown Prince is called the Dauphin, and perhaps ‘dolphin’ is a pretty good description of the kind of prince that Hal had been. It’s a beast that can look like a fish and move like a fish without ever forgetting that it isn’t a fish, and can dive deep into the water and leap through the air without belonging to either. It’s the cleverest and most playful of all beasts, and always seems to be just laughing and playing about, until you realise that it is lethally fast and accurate in pursuit of its prey, and that its smile is full of razor-sharp teeth. But, of course, we can outdo the French; where they only have a Dolphin, we have a Prince of Whales.

It didn’t occur to me at the time that Hal was starting to grow up. Perhaps he wished that I’d grow up as well, and become the sort of friend he could trust his life to in battle, rather than just a mate who was a good laugh when we were hanging out in the pub. Maybe he wished I was capable of at least trying to be helpful and responsible in an emergency, instead of just messing around the way we always had.

Well, obviously, I wasn’t. But there were still years more of drinking together and playing and having daft conversations, and not much changed between us, except that I became more of a show-off and spent even more money that I didn’t actually have, took on Robin as a page, and wrote all my letters headed in the Roman style, beginning with name and titles of sender followed by name and titles of recipient, even if it was just a note to say, ‘See you in the _Boar’s Head_ this evening.’ I began to be jealous of Ned Poins, who was the only other one in our gang who was a particularly close friend of Hal’s, because it couldn’t be long before Henry IV died and Hal became king, and being the king’s closest friend was obviously going to be a good position to be in. And after all, the only reason Hal and Poins got on so well was that they were both obsessed with disguises and playing practical jokes on anyone from me to the trainee barman at the _Boar’s Head_.

I don’t know what became of Poins. The last time I saw him was just before I had to ride off to Yorkshire for the Battle of Gaultree Forest, when I was having dinner with Nell Quickly and Doll Tearsheet and Bardolph and Pistol (except that Pistol started a fight with Doll almost at once and I had to chase him away, after which the women were all over me), and just when Doll and I were having a bit of a cuddle and gossiping about Hal and Poins, it turned out that those two were spying on me to find out what I said about them behind their backs. It must have been very disappointing for them to find out that, while I was mildly disparaging about them when they weren’t there, I was nothing like as obscene as when I was insulting them to their faces, but they pretended to take offence anyway, and I invented an excuse, and just when things were getting interesting, Peto turned up to tell me that there were army officers knocking on the door of every pub and every brothel in the area, wanting to know why I hadn’t reported for duty. In other words, it was exactly like any other evening at the _Boar’s Head_ , except that I didn’t know it would be the last time that Hal and Poins and I would ever spend an evening talking rubbish together like this. By the time I came back, Hal had become king, and Poins, who was sharper the rest of us and must have guessed the way things were going to go, had disappeared of his own accord without waiting to be banished.

In the two months I’d been with Arthur, I’d stopped thinking about the past, if only because it was a thousand years in the future. But now I was starting to remember it all again, and as I fell asleep, I dreamed about the day when I had gone to the Coronation, taking Bardolph and Pistol and Justice Shallow with me, to congratulate Hal on becoming king. But somehow this time, I dreamed that I _was_ the newly-crowned Henry V:

_When I’d decided to spend my time as a prince with all kinds of low-lifes from wayward knights to common ruffians and prostitutes, I hadn’t thought there were any serious drawbacks. Yes, I was deliberately ruining my reputation, so that people would be all the more impressed when I reformed later on, and in the meantime, I would have learnt how ordinary people lived. It hadn’t occurred to me that I was going to hurt anyone. Now, I’d become king, and the country was poised for a reign of terror. My father had really believed, until a few minutes before his death, that I wanted him to die. Hard-working officials who had had to punish me when I misbehaved were now terrified of reprisals. Even my own brothers were frightened of me._

_I had to prove to them all that I really had changed. And unfortunately, the only way I could do that was by rejecting everyone I had been friends with up until now, particularly the group of men standing in front of me now. They weren’t the salt of the earth. They were venal, selfish men whom I wouldn’t trust to feed my cat for the weekend, but who expected to be given great rank and power because they knew me. But on the other hand, they were men with whom I had heard not only the chimes at midnight but also the police banging on the door at 2am: men who loved and trusted me and, right now, were probably the only people in the world who did, and I was about to betray their trust, as though I was drowning blind kittens._

_Then again, were these men really worse than my father the usurper and (probable) murderer, or my brother who invited rebel leaders to peace talks only in order to kill them? When I had finally managed to convince my dying father that I loved him, he had given me his final advice, which was: ‘Go and start wars in the Middle East so that people don’t have time to think about whether you should be in power or not.’ My family weren’t much better than any other criminal gang, except that we had the power to be nasty on a bigger scale than anyone else._

_But all the same, I was now the head of both my family and the kingdom, and had to defend justice, and I couldn’t do that if my officials had to keep kow-towing to common criminals to keep them sweet. Why couldn’t these people who used to be my friends just take the hint and go away with some remnants of dignity? I was speaking more harshly than I wanted to, blaming them equally for things they couldn’t help, for things that weren’t even wrong, and for faults I’d never objected to in the past, in the hope that they’d be angry with me and not even want to be friends with me any more, but they still seemed to assume I was only joking. (Why shouldn’t they assume that? If you’re always giving your dog playful slaps, how’s it supposed to know when you’re smacking it to punish it?) Why did they stand there until I had to have them arrested just to get rid of them?_

_My life had been one long series of disguises. I had played at being a degenerate wastrel, played at being a highwayman, and even, once, played at being a waiter. Now I was playing a king, and, unless I went around disguised as an ordinary person sometimes, I was condemned to play the same part for the rest of my life._

That was what I dreamed, anyway. It’s just imagination, and I don’t know if Henry V really did think and feel all those things at once. But perhaps he did. When I woke up, there were tears on my pillow, and for the first time, I was feeling sorry for Henry V rather than for myself.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Erik. ‘I wasn’t even _trying_ to make you have nightmares this time, I promise!’

‘No, I’m fine. I was just remembering a man I knew once. He was trying to reform, but coming from a family as messed-up as his, it’s going to be a lonely, uphill struggle all the way. Still, I expect he’ll manage. Did you manage to sleep?’

‘Yes, all night, thanks.’

‘I wasn’t snoring too much?’ I asked.

‘I expect so, but I’ve got used to it. Now, let’s get up; it’s our turn to make breakfast.’ And we went out into the golden morning full of singing birds.


End file.
